Q&A: Why are companies looking to move to Connectria’s IBM i Cloud?

The IBM i platform has a nearly 30-year reputation for exceptional security and business resilience. Connectria provides an offering that allows you to take advantage of the reliable IBM i platform in a Cloud solution. No matter what version of IBM i you are running, Connectria has an available option to meet your needs. Here’s what you need to know.

Why are companies looking to move to the IBM i Cloud environment?

There are several key factors that drive customers to consider cloud offerings for IBM i workload. Those include: corporate restructure via merger/acquisition; staffing issues; total overall cost; and corporate refocus on running their core business. In moving to a cloud provider for IBM i, companies often look for a fully managed solution and gain 24×7 monitoring that they may not have in house. In future posts, we will drill in to each of the above in greater detail.

Can Connectria provide hosting for companies still running V5R4 or V6R1?

Absolutely! Connectria can provide hosting for companies still running V5R4 and V6R1 as IBM winds down support for those versions. We do not replace the support offered by IBM, but can run the environments, and will do a best effort on issue resolution surrounding the operating system. Hardware support is included. As maintenance costs continue to rise on older hardware and O/S versions, organizations are often able to reduce costs by moving to cloud and leveraging shared resources. If an organization is running an older version that they can’t get off of for whatever reason, Connectria will work with you.

Why would an organization want to stay on an end-of-life version of an operating system instead of upgrading?

A lot of customers’ environments are on V5R4 primarily for two reasons; it is just working and they didn’t upgrade, or they’re running a version of an application that is not supported on a more current O/S release. The application likely has a version that runs on a more current O/S, but the cost of upgrading the application is often prohibitive due to hiring the skills to perform the upgrade or in some cases, a lapse in application maintenance/support.

How can Connectria help organizations upgrade to a supported version?

Connectria can guide organizations through the thought process around an O/S upgrade and perform that upgrade when all considerations have been met. In many cases, we can provide hardware to test and validate customer environments running on a new O/S before impacting the production system. Each case is truly unique and handled individually.

If you have any other questions regarding IBM i, Connectria’s managed cloud solutions, or other solutions we provide, please contact us.